The templates are part of NativeScript Sidekick, a GUI client companion to the NativeScript command-line interface. Sidekick was introduced on Tuesday. Along with the templates, Sidekick contains plugins, cloud builds, and debugging support. Progress Software, the developer of NativeScript, offers Sidekick as a free download.

Featuring a set of cross-platform abstractions and runtimes, open source NativeScript allows you to develop native mobile apps with JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. A NativeScript runtime translates between JavaScript/TypeScript/Angular and the native APIs on Apple iOS and Google Android, allowing developers to write an application just once to support both platforms.

Other new and forthcoming improvements for NativeScript:

Augmented reality (AR) is currently supported for Apple iOS 11 and under development for Android. The goal is to enable development of AR experiences to work on both iOS and Android.

Code-sharing between web and mobile apps is in development, to enable the reuse of source code from web apps in native mobile apps. The company estimates that about 80 percent of web code could be migrated.

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